Making Communication Tech Work For You: Professionally And Personally

Ah, communication technology – it’s the most amazing thing in the world, keeping everyone connected and webbed together in the tightest of nets. When it works. But that’s one of the things about the advancement of gadgets and gizmos when it comes to communication specifically – it takes some time to adapt to, and there’s always going to be a learning curve involved. And that goes for both professional and personal use.

Think about a few generations of your family, for instance. Grandparents may be completely comfortable with landlines, a bit more hesitant about cell phones, unsure of smartphones, and completely uncomfortable with video chats. But now teenagers don’t even know how to plug landline phones into the wall, and don’t know anyone’s phone numbers anyway.

And think about businesses. How efficient are answering machines really? Now what would it take to open up the possibility of people being able to text or SMS orders, questions, or troubleshooting matters in to bosses or employees? Where do those comfort zones sit? So essentially, no matter who you are or what you do, the faster you learn to adapt and make all of your options work for you, the better off you’ll be with respect to the entire spectrum of personal and professional communication. Consider some of the following ways to handle certain communication structures.

Full-On Business Solutions

For major business with lots of communication traffic between multiple sources and the need for things like video teleconferencing, there are solutions like hiring a Cisco distributor to handle all of your infrastructure needs. These types of solutions are going to involve heavy IT work, software installations, hardware configurations, and a whole lot of personalization along the way. But when the process is complete, the idea of communication to anyone anywhere in any format is a real possibility. Think about the increase in efficiency and productivity when a company is truly connected at the full range of possibilities – that’s when modern tech is really working for you.

Personal Communication Applications

And then, on a personal level, think about what the modern options are for you. Specifically when it comes to the closest thing to personal interaction, a one-on-one video chat is going to be the best thing ever. You can install Skype and have this for free, once you learn how to use it and make sure that user names and network configurations are in place properly. In fact, with modern setups, these setups are almost automatic, so even older generations of people should have no problem expanding their comfort zones. With just a webcam and a Wi-Fi signal, communication is your audio-visual best friend!

Mobile Connection Potential

And communication mobility is changing the world as we speak. A full generation of kids have been using smartphones as long as they can remember, and that idea of being constantly able to connect both to the internet and to specific people (think parents, employers, teachers, groups of friends) means that perpetual contact is available. There’s lots of complaining about people not being connected with the world immediately around them, and this is part of the growing pain of the human mind trying to find a balance with these new communication possibilities.

Non-Real Time Options

Another aspect of new communication tech available with today’s gadgets and devices is non-real time potential. In other words, you can leave messages or stories in a chronological format, always as an option, but the message doesn’t go through immediately. There are ways to do this through apps like Facebook, Periscope, Snapchat, and many others, where communication is omnipresent, but scheduled.

Work With Read Receipts

And finally, do make new communication tech work for you in all aspects of your life, consider working with read receipts as much as possible. This means that communication is time-stamped when it’s created, when it’s sent, when it’s received, and when it’s interacted with. Having this trail of digital data means that there aren’t any surprises about what kind of message was sent when, and if it was received by the party on the other end. There are both social and professional benefits of this type of logging.